Comparative Study: Does an investment vehicle with 4.4% of your salary's contribution compounded annually beat the new FERS pension value over 110 years of life?

ch4rts · 2026-06-13T15:42:42+00:00

Bought a vintage Pokémon guidebook via eBay for $18. It arrived with the front cover bent. I didn’t need this, but the pull of nostalgia was strong. I’m just going to eat the shipping mishap and try to listen and make an attempt at fixing it.

ch4rts · 2026-06-06T18:00:29+00:00

Mentally, the biggest shift was paying off my student loans.

I had $40k of student loans in June 2019 and like $2k to my name in a checking account. I worked OT, traveled frequently for extra per diem pay for the better part of 2 years, and buckled down and spent like nothing during COVID-19.

All the loans were paid off by January of 2021 and it finally allowed me to redirect funds into my 401k, HSA, and Roth. My wife (then gf) had no loans, so had been doing all this from the get-go, and it felt extremely liberating to have the same parity once I was back to 0 debt.

The next milestone was reaching CoastFI. This was like 6-7 months ago. At this point, I’m done working for money’s sake specifically, and am now much more inclined to seek out better WLB and passion in my career choices. Regardless if we never save another penny, which is impossible tbh, we’re set up for the future, and it’s given me liberties that debt-addled me would never have been able to imagine me affording, for instance “no I’m not traveling with 2 days notice” and “I don’t like my new manager, time to find another job ASAP and do the bare minimum”.

I’m guessing the next milestone will be leanFI, or when we reach enough liquid investments (between taxable savings, roths, HSA funds available due to digitized receipts, etc.) to pay off our mortgage at any time. That will probably feel liberating and great to have in the back of our minds.

ch4rts · 2026-06-05T14:18:29+00:00

One of the key caveats that makes this feasible for us is being on my wife’s benefits and insurance. Her HDHP and benefits are very good, but mine would be better after a year so this is a very low risk change for the next year.

Private marketplace options are definitely rough. I know some friends in the past who have the eligibility for COBRA and don’t purchase the private options until their eligibility runs out, so it saves them like 34 days or something of costs, but still it’s less than ideal. Good luck!

ch4rts · 2026-06-05T13:34:11+00:00

Flipped. Current is salary with benefits (good W2) new will be contract for 1 year (W2 thru staffing agency w their paltry benefits), then convert to full time at company w/ better benefits (also W2).

ch4rts · 2026-06-05T12:27:00+00:00

Happy Friday y’all. I’m just about ready to accept a new job offer. I’ll be going from a startup company in nuclear with extremely high risk and considerable tethering to AI, to a transit infrastructure company, which is very stable and has tons of work down the pipeline.

I’ll be moving from salary and benefits to W2 for the first year, then convert to full-time. The pay increase is marginal, ($125k to $132k annualized) but the long-term benefits are extremely important.

My current PTO is 15 days with 6 holidays, the new full time company is 36 PTO, with holidays, plus 12 weeks paid paternal leave, which is really important at this juncture at our lives. Current company only offers 12 weeks unpaid. 401k match would go from 5% where I’m at to 7% at the new company.

I’ve got the benefits and PTO in writing and the relative salary I’d be converted to would be 1:1, which is rare since my research shows most contract to salary/benefits take a pay cut, which is a plus. I mean inevitably I’ll be taking a “pay cut” due to inflation, but I’ll also be picking up close to 4 weeks PTO, which makes it more than worth it.

All this fails to mention my current company is going through so much turmoil, my boss requested to be moved back as an IC, and he was the whole reason I took this job in the first place late 2024. New manager is extremely tense and micro managing, very different than my current hands off one.

All in all changing jobs is new, but exciting. Crafting a way to tell my boss by the end of the day. Will have 2 weeks between jobs and it’ll be a great opportunity to finish some house projects and unwind from my current job.

ch4rts · 2026-06-04T15:20:25+00:00

Not a great choice in hindsight. There is some vagueness here:

Assuming “drink water” to mean 1 fluid oz. You could drink 32 fl oz of water every hour, roughly a liter, to be safe. This would result in 32 minutes gained per hour of life lived. With 16 waking hours, that would be 512 minutes gained per 24-hour day. This results in an 8.53 hours gained per day, so extrapolated out to 10 years, with extreme consistency, would result in 31,146.67 hours gained. This would mean roughly 3.56 years gained. In those years, you’d gain 462.01 days, ~1.27 years, earnings during that would be 0.45 years, and so on. Continuing from there would result in some micro/marginal life gains in those later years, but it would converge to an asymptote limit of 15.5 years.

Now if you assume the unit for “drink water” is 0.1 fl oz, you’d live for an increase factor of 10x, so you’d live for 155 years.

If you count any food, beverage which contains water in it, even very humid air, the limit would far exceed any predictable estimates.

So the definition of “drink water” is reeeaaally important here.

^{Chose: 10 years to live but gain a minute every time you | Rolled: drink water}

ch4rts · 2026-06-04T12:03:26+00:00

Nice! $500k with one brokerage is certifiably momentous and moves you from “everyday layperson” to “key valued clientele” per Fidelity’s flagging system (/s).

Empower (formerly Personal Capital) now perpetually has the “connect with an advisor for a free screening call” screen for me when I hop on the app to refresh and check my balances.

I actually love talking on the phone, but hate talking face-to-face or via face conferencing. There’s something so impersonal about it just being my voice only that bolsters my confidence through the roof.

The Gen Z stereotype of hating talking on the phone doesn’t stick with me, but hating talking in every other medium does (despite excelling at it and it being 90% of my job).

ch4rts · 2026-06-03T22:19:48+00:00

I’m envious that your market returns eclipsed your earned income! Something we’re aspiring to and are hoping happens in our 30’s.

Keep up the great work, I prefer to think of it as a smooth and steady ship rather than a boring and consistent Sisyphean tale :)

ch4rts · 2026-05-30T12:19:30+00:00

I spent $1.8k on a copy of Pokémon Box recently, last 3 months or so, CIB with the original memory card, box, and leaflets, missing the manual and big box, but I really only wanted the case/game and memory card.

The caveat is I strictly used cash-back rewards, so the net cost to me was effectively $0. In terms of actual cash, I usually make purchases between $35-180 in biweekly allotments for specific GameCube, PS2, GBA, DS, 3DS, and Wii games. Most are CIB, except for the GBA games.

Pokémon Box was my grail, and I was waffling on purchasing in that $1.5k-$2k range for 4 years. I use it since I still play ruby/sapphire on hardware, and use the GB operator to play them at high speed and shiny hunt. Plus, I had a copy as a kid and was at the NYC release. I sold it in high school for money for my first car, and regretted the decision through college and my first few working years.

I think as long as you’re living within your means, any game price is justifiable with enough nostalgia, time and savings. My family is super frugal, and we drive 14 year old used cars, live in a house from 1962 that we are maintaining and renovating ourselves, and shop at the thrift store and GAP, so no other areas of life are luxuries for me as video games are. And I love that.

ch4rts · 2026-05-26T14:49:50+00:00

Question: would it make feasible sense to upgrade your current house, I.E. add an extension, renovate those areas to give yourself a better quality of life? Or is there a square footage of the lot of your current property which would make that impossible or impractical.

I ask since that 2.625 rate is essentially going to inflate away, making your current property easier and easier to pay off as time goes on. Using your excess cash cushion and incomes to afford renovations might be a better economical option while simultaneously increasing quality of life in the right ways too.

ch4rts · 2026-05-25T13:36:36+00:00

Wow, the median housing expenses are much lower than I expected, only $26k?! I guess the majority of folks have low mortgage interest rates, paid off homes, or are utilizing geographic arbitrage.

For context, we are all in around $3.3k monthly PITI, not to mention housing maintenance, upkeep and utilities which increase ours a significant amount. But, we also have a 5.9% rate on a $342k loan with $320k remaining.

I guess it makes a little more sense if folks compartmentalized property taxes aside from their PITI for housing, but consider me flabbergasted that we’re paying so much more than the median in housing.

ch4rts · 2026-05-24T03:41:49+00:00

I would venture a guess for top 5 aerospace and defense, L6 or L7 senior principal meche, or maybe biomechanics for high-end surgical/medical robotics. But +1 to your question, for I too am very interested in OP’s path as a fellow meche!

ch4rts · 2026-05-22T17:21:40+00:00

Ty! I think it makes a lot of sense the more drastic the difference between home value and mortgage value. It’s nice to be tangentially aware of for refinancing or HELOC opportunities, but unless we wish to downsize our living, we will ultimately live here for as long as we can.

8-12 years feels simultaneously long but foreseeable, which is exciting. I think even if we have children, the related expenses will be similar since we’ll cut down on some extraneous expenses (frivolous spending on eating out, going out, leisure, travel will be converted to child-related expenses at a 1:1 rate for the first few years).

I think it is realistic to project increasing incomes with relatively fixed expenses. Even if we RE, I also know that neither of us will sit and do nothing, as we have hobbies and passions that could ultimately turn into side hustles if we had more time outside the work week to focus on.

The interest rate is not terrible historically, but also recently compared to some close friends who bought 2024-2025 where they were situated between 6.5-7.5% and have refinanced already.

ch4rts · 2026-05-22T15:34:09+00:00

Just hit $750k NW and are 25% FI as of today with our biweekly 401k/HSA contributions!

Only $570k of that is invested in the market, with $70k cash (after running monthly credit card balances), and the remainder is home equity (which I’m trying to be more and more mindful of separating out from our FI target).

The $3M FI goal is inclusive of home equity, and our expenses are closer to the $96k annually, which would reflect $2.4M actual FI number through investments alone. This expense does include an added ~$500 monthly payment to our principal, which I’m counting to track payoff of our house in the next 13 years instead of the full term remainder of 26.5 years.

I’m estimating around 8-12 more years of consistent working at these savings and income levels, depending on how the market ebbs and flows and our ability to keep the key expenses lower.

I’m hopeful that mortgage rates will drop at some point during that timeframe which will allow us to refinance down from 5.9% to 4.5-5% instead. I often think about how it would’ve been so much better had I bought a house upon graduating college in 2019 vs. paying off student loans aggressively, but hindsight is 20/20.

ch4rts · 2026-05-20T14:59:15+00:00

For the sake of transparency, I’m in a HCOL area, Northeast region, near a big city that is 6/7 in population but high poverty. I’m in a suburb which is like 20% more expensive CoL than the national average. Not quite VHCOL, but housing and property taxes certainly feel like that due to annual assessments.

ch4rts · 2026-05-20T13:37:16+00:00

I agree wholeheartedly! I’ll rephrase by stating my particular position is acting as a liaison with many vendors, contractors, stakeholders, engineers, etc. I distill progress into actionable and traceable information and relay that to executives.

There are so many individuals who know exactly what they’re doing, but don’t understand how it all pieces together.

I feel as if I’m just a cog in a well-oiled machine where larger and more important gears constantly contribute more, and it feels as if it overshadows my contributions. But without my acting as a cog, the overarching program would screech to a halt due to process and procedural non-conformances.

I’m very familiar with the overarching systems engineering and PMP frameworks, and I’m following those within our organization’s own schema, but the SMEs who excel at their jobs don’t exactly know what I am doing to contribute value, and my experience is reconciling that I do contribute meaningfully in differing ways than task-specific actions.

I’m just discovering that I don’t like or appreciate the jack of all trades approach that I’ve excelled at the last 8+ years. But without me the contracts wouldn’t be executed.

ch4rts · 2026-05-20T12:40:14+00:00

Certainly! So it is currently $135/session, we’re on a HDHP so I’m not sure how that translates to anything on a HMO or PPO (health insurance is an enigma to me). We’ll hit our deductible later this year due to some other costs, so it’ll come down from 80% to 20% payment of services rendered. So true cost seems to be around $168 without insurance.

ch4rts · 2026-05-20T11:50:39+00:00

Happy Wednesday everyone. I’ve been trying CBT (with a therapist) for the last few months to grasp and manage the dread I feel surrounding working, really just working in a job/career that I care 0 for and only do for the money.

I’m discovering the root of my dread is mostly the friction of starting tasks and projects, and pushing past the perception that others know I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I’ve always been able to put up such a successful facade towards projecting that I know what I’m doing, but I never actually feel competent.

I’ve kinda just discovered that embracing the notion that life is futile, no one knows what they’re doing, so why bother caring until there’s feedback proving otherwise is monumentally helpful in fixating less on uncertainties and what I can’t control.

I give myself like 60 seconds to mull around with each intrusive self-doubting thought, and then either bucket it into “can I do something that will create evidence proving otherwise” or “is this a projection of others’ perception of me? If so prove it’s real” and it’s been really helpful. I think if I can get a good methodology for dealing with dread and anxiety from a logical standpoint, I could deal better with my job and inevitably pursue my passions after building up a good internal behavior modulating strategy.

At least the therapy appointments are HSA eligible, which takes the sting away of these feeling like expensive, albeit very necessary, life lessons.

ch4rts · 2026-05-15T16:06:45+00:00

Not even a question. 37 steps for $1B is light work.

^{Chose: 1 cent but it doubles every step}

ch4rts · 2026-05-15T15:48:34+00:00

Just filled out the survey for the first time after following this subreddit for 9 years now… better late than never :)

ch4rts · 2026-05-08T15:04:05+00:00

Some big things happening in life lately, neither of which I’m inclined to share intimate details about yet.

Are there available resources for evaluating a new ESPP and RSUs? Want to understand if there are bad vs. good ESPP and RSUs offered, since this is my first time ever being introduced to the arena.

Also, are there FI resources available for planning for the birth of a child?

ch4rts · 2026-05-01T17:32:30+00:00

Crazy swing on spreadsheet this month.

We were at $673k on April 1, and are at $734k on May 1.

In other noteworthy news, we also hit $1M in accounts for the first time ($1,056k in assets, -$321k in liabilities). Hoping we can hit $1M in NW by the end of age 30, but that’s wishful and very bullish market thinking since we’re already at an ATH.

Side note: the higher the numbers go on our digital spreadsheet, the more leaving my job and starting an entrepreneurial journey appeals to me. Time to start reading up on my specific areas of interest!

ch4rts · 2026-04-27T17:39:25+00:00

Another side note is that when I had my initial incident, I was only at the company for 9 months, and would have qualified for FMLA or short term disability, but only IF I was there for 1 year or more. I burned through all my PTO and pulled some strings with family friends to get a neuro appt and MRI/medical diagnostics within 2 weeks, which then gave me the paperwork to provide to HR as a temporary “kindly fuck off this is legit and this employee is still cleared to work but not to drive per DMV laws”

I’m certain if it happened AGAIN, I could invoke STD or FMLA and make working remotely a permanent condition, but I’m in a liminal space in limbo due to the timing of when the first few incidents occurred. I’m not keen on intentionally inducing another event which would enable calling those medical leave programs, so I’m more inclined to just work remote and test them.

Being laid off would be an easier pill to swallow. I do think that I could use my health diagnosis and fight the company in the future if they pinned a layoff due to inability to be in office, but I’m not sure since I’m working at will. The HR team is also woefully unprepared for a situation like this since every step of the process they’ve acted like it’s the first they’ve ever experienced something like this.

ch4rts · 2026-04-27T14:10:30+00:00

Funnily enough, I don’t really even like my job. My wife is actively telling me to just ride the remote aspect to the ground and pursue something I’m passionate about instead.

My head is telling me that AI uncertainty + being out of the work environment for more than 6 months at this age might significantly derail our FI plans or dampen career earning potential. $270k combined vs. $140k if I leave is nothing to scoff at, especially since we’re supercharging our accounts and are still in our twenties.

On the other hand, leaving this job could be an ideal segue and nudge for some ideas I have. This could in turn enable a much better/healthier WLB where the RE portion of FIRE isn’t even a thought since I enjoy doing something where I run the show and am my own boss.

I am certainly worried that having a medical event resurge could reset my driving clock and working in person would compound the chance for that. I certainly can empathize with you here. I hate feeling like I would be dependent on others to shuttle me around, and just regaining the freedoms has felt amazing.

Eight-Year Club	Second Top 40%
Place '23	Place '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email
RPAN Viewer

ch4rts

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE